


the catch

by mornen



Series: I see a darkness in you [6]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Childhood, Dark Magic, Gen, Horror, Magic, Memories, Nightmares, Swimming, character introspection, fears, reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: Elrond thinks about his fears and the fears of his children.*Arwen runs to Galadriel. Elrond keeps pace beside her. It is his river, but it it is fickle with its love.‘It’s cold,’ Galadriel says.‘It is cold,’ Arwen says, ‘but I don’t mind it.’Arwen is not afraid of anything.
Series: I see a darkness in you [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025992
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	the catch

Elrond holds Arwen’s hands as she walks up his legs, getting as high as his thighs before she pushes off him and launches herself backwards. She spins through the air and lands on her feet, and he keeps her steady, hands still holding hers. She pulls her hands free, and he releases her. She straightens out her white shirt and then holds her hands out to him again to climb his legs and tip backwards again.

Galadriel watches from a moss covered rock. Her skirt is pushed up past her knees, and her feet are in the river.

‘Elrond,’ she says.

He turns his head to her as Arwen finishes the fall and starts her ascent again. Galadriel stands and walks to them, carefully, in the shallows of the river, over the dark rocks. The rocks become scarcer as she nears them. This part of the river has a flat sandy, bank, maintained for swimming. Galadriel stops beside them, feet sunk into the sand, hand shading her face.

It is August, and hot. The air is filled with the scent of the warmed grass and earth, leaves, and water.

‘I want to swim now,’ Arwen says.

She is six years old and has never left her home. She pulls off her white linen shirt and her grey linen shorts, both stitched with stars, and hands them to Elrond. Elrond takes them and folds them and sets them on a flat stone with a clean stone over them so that the wind will not take them.

Arwen runs to Galadriel. Elrond keeps pace beside her. It is his river, but it it is fickle with its love, and she is small. She is six years old.

Had he been that small then?

When Maglor had caught him up and he had screamed and fallen, nothing had been small or large or even real any longer. It had only been white. The white of his mother’s dress as she backed away from Maedhros, her eyes wide and white and wild. The white of the swords in the sunlight. The white of the torches in the sunlight. The white of the crest of the waves. The white of the sea spray. And he had been on the floor, and Elros had been in Maglor’s arms, and Elwing had jumped because they were all going to die, but at least she could spite them. And her dress was white in the air, and the Silmaril was white in the sky, white falling.

‘It’s cold,’ Galadriel says, and she’s talking to Arwen.

‘It is cold,’ Arwen says, ‘but I don’t mind it.’

Galadriel touches her shadowy hair.

‘My darling,’ she whispers.

Elrond releases Arwen’s hand. He doesn’t want to. It’s hard to let go of any of them. When Elladan and Elrohir were young, he was worse. He snatched them up so many times, carried them with any excuse he could find. They slept in a cradle beside his and Celebrían’s bed until they were old enough to put in the bed, and then they slept there between him and Celebrían. He would wake in the night to trace their features and listen to their hearts. He would wake them sometimes, just to see if they were alive, even if they cried. They would nap in the daytime, and he would run into their room in tears, afraid to find them gone.

‘It was so long ago,’ Glorfindel said, when he didn’t know Elrond could hear. ‘How can it do so much still?’

‘It stays,’ Celebrían said.

She understood that he needed to teach them to play dead. And so they did, like a game.

He teaches Arwen to play dead too. She’s better at it, can lie still longer. She is more patient than her brothers. She is prouder too, more stubborn.

‘I am braver than the cold,’ Arwen says, turning her head sharply to peer up at Elrond. ‘I’m not afraid of anything, am I, Ada?’

‘Not yet,’ he says gently.

Elladan was afraid of the dark, and Elrohir of fire.

‘I see people in the dark,’ Elladan said, four years old, standing and staring into the hall. ‘And they are not kind to me.’

Celebrían pulled him back and slammed the door. They did not allow him alone for ten years.

‘What if I burn to death,’ Elrohir said, six years old, staring into the open flames in the Hall of Fire.

Celebrían pulled his hand back.

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘You won’t.’

She stared at Elrond. It carried. His fëa was marred, and it carried.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He lifted Elrohir and stroked his hair.

Elrohir had nightmares after, of burning, of heat, of rock softened by heat slipping across the world, of fire that burned without consuming, of red throbbing over the water, chasing, following, deep, hot, and swallowing.

But Arwen is not afraid of anything. She kneels in the river and takes a handful of sand, sifting through it, studying the pebbles that remain.

‘Watch her,’ Elrond tells Galadriel. He undresses and places his clothes with Arwen’s and follows her into the river. It is cold, but he isn’t bothered by it. Galadriel sits on the grass. The wind picks up.

Elrond leads Arwen farther into the river. It is still shallow here. He sits on the bottom, and she swims around him. He keeps her within arm's reach.

Elladan comes down the slope and sits on the grass beside Galadriel. He rests his head against her shoulder. He is grown now, but he still sees things in the dark. They are visions, deep and terrible. You can call them ghosts, if you want. Elladan is trained now in controlling this magic. It runs deep through him. He walks like a shadow.

Elrond traces Arwen’s shadow in the sand beneath the water, but the river takes his marks away.

‘I’m done swimming,’ she says, and they get out of the river. Arwen runs to her brother and grandmother and slides onto Elladan’s lap. He wraps his arms around her.

‘You’re cold,’ he says.

‘I don’t feel it.’

Elladan looks up at Elrond, and his eyes are so soft that Elrond freezes for a moment, and he wonders if this is what he would have been like if playing dead had always been a game. Elladan’s smile is soft too, soft and beautifully unreserved.

Elrond dresses and hands Arwen her clothes. She doesn’t put them on, but he doesn’t press it. She will if she gets cold.

He walks beside the river and Galadriel follows him. He does not know what she will say to him.

She touches his arm. She says, ‘I want her to stay like that forever.’

‘Mmm.’ Elrond searches the hills for danger.

‘There’s no danger here,’ Galadriel says.

‘I am still terrified.’

Galadriel wraps her arms around Elrond’s arm. Her hair sweeps over them. She watches his children.

‘The water is cold,’ she says.

‘It is,’ he says.

‘Maybe she will never be afraid of the cold.’

Elrond pulls Galadriel into his arms. He strokes her hair gently as it catches in the wind, on his fingers. He kisses her. Her dress is white. It is is bright in the sun.

‘I love them,’ she says.

‘More than life,’ he says.

More than the world.


End file.
